Snorkeling the wrecks and bobbing with the Aussies

Wow what a cool thing we did today, 10/28! We went drift snorkeling through a reef of fifteen scuttled ships, called the Tangalooma Wrecks. This was the first time that Cindy or I have ever snorkeled over wrecks. The ships were sunk on purpose to create a safe harbor at Moreton Island. They were sunk in the early 1960's and they now have all kinds of coral growing on them and they are teeming with fish and other sea life.

Part of the Tangalooma Wrecks off Moreton Island

We snorkeled with the current. You leave the boat at the top end of the current and drift along snorkeling through the wrecks. When you reach the end of the wrecks the boat is there to pick you up. So if Verne does this, if he misses the boat he will end up in New Guinea! I know you are wondering two things; well the answers are yes and no. Yes we had morning tea on board and learned a new Aussie word "bicky". We had tea, cakes and bicky (biscuits/cookies). No we did not see Nemo. We dove down to the bottom of the wrecks looking through the coral for the clown fish but no luck. I think Disney just made up those fish! We did see plenty of green sea turtles. These were just like the ones in the Nemo movie. We also saw an eagle ray, starfish and a dugong, which looks a lot like and is in the same family as the manatee.

a dugong (Google photo)

Moreton Island is about 14 miles off the Gold Coast. We caught a catamaran at the town of Redcliffe. The seas were choppy on the way to and from the island but out at the island the seas leveled off nicely. We snorkeled for a few hours then had lunch on the boat. After lunch they did a strange thing. They put a net off the back of the boat and several people got into the net and they drug them through the water bouncing up and down. They call it boomnetting. I guess this is an Aussie thing. Cindy wanted to do it until she watched the first group go and she quickly changed her mind. After that fun was done the boat pulled on to the beach and we all piled off and went beach combing, sand dune climbing and swimming. The whole island is made of sand washed north from the sandstone that is being washed out of the rivers further south. One dune is over 300 meters high and covered with trees.

This is the catamaran from today's trip. If you were on the Na Pali coast catamaran trip the week of Heather & Taki's wedding, you'll recognize this boat. The only difference was the way the inside was configured. The ride was pretty much the same. Good thing Cindy had her sea bands!

Almost forgot to mention that Cindy and I were the only ones on the boat from the USA and the Aussies had a good time with that. They had special life jackets just for us (water wings), vegemite sandwiches for our lunch (instead of the buffet), and if the ship sunk everyone was supposed to form a tight circle in the water to avoid the sharks and we were assigned the perimeter. Oh it feels so good to be loved!! One good thing when we got back on the boat they always made sure the two Americans were onboard.